Keep Me Alive (32 page)

He turned his head away, swinging his functioning leg in a vicious kick at the side of the bench. ‘Is it because of what I did to my father?’

‘You mean telling Jamie Maxden about how your father disposed of diseased meat to the local authority up north? No, Will, that’s not why.’

He lifted his head as if he’d just heard a shot in the distance. ‘So you did know. I thought you did. When did you find out?’

‘When I was trying to discover whether Jamie could have killed himself. I stumbled on it by accident, but it made such sense that I believed it straight away, as it made sense of the fight you had with Jamie after you found him with Susannah.’

He stared up at the sky. She thought he was trying to keep tears inside his eyelids.

‘It was the worst thing I’ve ever done, including getting Mandy killed. I was so angry with him that I just handed Jamie all the information he’d wanted for so long. The deal was that he would never – ever – tell anyone it came from me. That night I thought he’d broken his promise. But he hadn’t. He stuck to it right to the end. Not many men would have. And you know what happened: it ruined his career. Indirectly it led to his death too.’

‘Did anyone ever know that you’d given Jamie the information?’

Will looked at her for a second. She’d never seen such misery in his eyes.

‘Only my father. God knows how he found out. Maybe it was just a guess. But he came rampaging into the farm office, where I was filling out some of those interminable ministry forms, and started yelling at me. That’s when he had the stroke. If I hadn’t done it, he’d probably still be alive.’

He shook his head from side to side, as though he couldn’t
bear the weight of his memories. At last he looked back at her, with the tears sliding out of his eyes. ‘Maybe you’re right to have nothing to do with me. Three people have died because of me.’

‘It’s not that, Will.’ She touched his arm again, and felt the tendons as hard as they’d been on the day he had to give his evidence. ‘I have someone already.’

She couldn’t work out whether rage or surprise was making his voice so rough. She had to work hard not to edge away along the bench.

‘It’s true,’ she said gently. ‘He’s called George Henton, and we’ve been together for nearly six years now.’

‘But you don’t wear a ring. And there’s never been any sign of him in your flat. Or in the way you live. Everything about you announces your single status.’ He rounded to face her again. ‘It’s not
fair
, Trish. You let me fall in love with you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ It was all she could say as he fought for the right words to tell her what she’d done to him. They didn’t come so, as usual, she had to try to help.

‘Will, don’t look like that. You’ve won your case. You’ve been vindicated. Everything you did and said and felt about Furbishers has been publicly applauded. You and all the other claimants you brought together will be put back into the financial position you were in before Furbishers screwed you. That’s a huge thing to have achieved. You can start again, and this time you’ll know how to protect yourself better.’

‘But I won’t have you.’ He pushed and pulled himself up off the bench. She just caught the last words. ‘None of it’ll mean anything without that.’

She watched him hobble away, wishing she’d been able to help. But he wouldn’t have been able to hear anything she said at the moment, and she had to get her mind clear so that she could talk to Kim.

 

*

 

Trish had avoided lunch. She didn’t want her mind fogged with food or drink when she came to talk to Kim, but emptiness was making her stomach rumble. She hoped it wouldn’t worry the child.

At exactly half past four the door to the interview room opened and Kim appeared with Mrs Critch. They were still not holding hands. Trish smiled at the woman, who sat down near the door, leaving Kim standing in her neat red dungarees and red-and-white striped shirt.

‘Hello, Kim. D’you remember me? I’m Trish Maguire.’

The blonde head bowed in silent acknowledgement. She didn’t look any different from the last time they’d met. There were still dark-violet crescents under her eyes.

‘Come and sit down.’

‘D’you want me to do a painting?’ Kim asked in a whisper.

‘Not this time,’ Trish said quietly.

When they were sitting opposite each other at the small, scarred table, Trish put her hands on the surface, balancing her wrists on the edge. Kim kept hers in her lap.

‘Kim, I need some help.’

The child didn’t look at her.

‘I am trying to save your mum.’

Kim’s eyelids flew up. Her lips remained tightly closed.

‘What happened to her when you made a noise in the night?’

Kim’s face crumpled, but she held on, breathing hard through her nose.

‘I know you’re frightened that something even worse will happen if you talk to us, but we can’t help her unless we know everything. Do you understand that, Kim?’

Kim shook her head. Tears flew out of her eyes. Still she didn’t speak.

‘You said that Daniel made you stand on the box after you’d been screaming in the night. Is that right?’

She nodded.

‘Was there more than that, Kim? Did something else happen?’

The tight, chewed lips didn’t open.

‘What did he say when he first told you to stand on the box?’

‘That if I couldn’t go to sleep without screaming when I had a bad dream, then I’d better not sleep at all.’

‘So he made you take off your nightie and stand on the box to make you stay awake?’ This wasn’t a leading question, only confirmation of what Kim had already told her.

‘Yes. With the window open behind me.’

‘So you got cold?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you sometimes go to sleep anyway?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened then, Kim?’

She looked across the tiny table, her eyes imploring Trish to stop.

‘Kim, we have to know what happened so that we can help. And we can help. I promise you.’

‘He said he’d kill her if I told.’

Trish held in her reactions and her fury with all her strength. It felt like the most enormous physical effort she had ever made. If Daniel Crossman had been standing in front of her, she might not have been able to keep her hands off him.

‘Who, Kim? Who did he say he was going to kill?’

‘My mum.’

‘Did he say how?’

‘With the knife.’ Tears were sliding out of her eyes now. She wiped the backs of both hands against her face.

‘Which knife, Kim?’

‘The vinyl one,’ she whispered, ‘with the red handle. He keeps it in the drawer by his bed.’

The stillness in the room was absolute. Trish had never known anything that took so much self-control.

‘Have you seen it?’

Kim’s eyelids lifted again. Through her tears, she looked at Trish as if she were a fool.

‘Of course. It’s what he uses when I fall off the box.’

‘When you go to sleep?’

‘Yes.’

‘How does he use it?’

The silence lasted for nearly five minutes. It felt like eternity. Trish knew she mustn’t ask anything else or offer any more reassurance; Kim had to do this on her own.

‘When I go to sleep and fall off the box,’ she said at last in a tiny voice, ‘he makes me watch while he cuts my mum.’

Trish fought to get herself and her voice back in order. No wonder Kim had twice run away from home. That must have seemed like the only way to save her mother since she couldn’t stop herself falling asleep, even naked in the cold blast from an opened window. No wonder she hadn’t told anyone about what happened.

When she could speak again, Trish said carefully, ‘You have had a very frightening time, Kim. And you have done everything you could. I would never have been able to be as strong as you. Your mum probably sometimes seemed cross with you, but you have been a very good daughter. It’s not your fault that Daniel hurt her. It’s Daniel’s fault.’

Kim leaned forwards until her whole torso lay on the table. Her back heaved with the hugeness of her sobs.

 

Andrew flung his arms around Trish, just as she’d wanted to hug Kim.

‘Only you could have done it. What is it about you that makes these children trust you when no one else can reach them?’

‘I don’t know, except that I never lie to them. And I care.’

‘It’s more than that: a kind of witchcraft.’

She shook her head, thinking of some terrible stories she’d
heard of children from alien cultures, whose relatives had beaten and killed them to exorcize evil spirits and black magic. ‘You shouldn’t even think like that in your line of work, Andrew, let alone talk about it. It’s wrong, too. There’s nothing in what I do except experience, mixed with sympathy and some good guesses.’

He put up both hands in surrender. ‘OK. Whatever you say. I don’t care what it is, so long as you keep doing the work. You mustn’t give up, Trish, however much you can earn elsewhere.’

‘That’s not why I don’t do family law any more,’ she said through her teeth, which made him apologize and back off.

 

‘How
did
you know, Trish?’ Caro asked later, when Andrew had gone and Pete Hartland was on his way back to the police station to organize Daniel Crossman’s arrest. Trish was sipping a mug of strong tea. All she could think about was Kim and how she was ever going to move on from this.

‘I kept finding myself thinking about guilt and people’s responsibility to – and for – their parents, and suddenly it seemed obvious. I’m only sorry it took so long.’

‘That’s not your fault. We should have known. We should have seen. The Stanley knife was there when we searched the flat, but it was in a tool box and it didn’t look out of place. He said he’d been using it to cut new vinyl tiles for the bathroom. We should have examined Mo, instead of just the children. There must be scars all over her.’

‘You’re child protection officers; your minds were on them. Don’t beat yourself up about this, Caro.’

‘Easier to say than to do. I can’t tell you how much I owe you, Trish.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘It’s not just Kim,’ Caro said, looking as though she found words as hard as the child had done. ‘It’s the E. coli, too. I
infected you, and it’s only good luck and your immune system that saved you.’

‘That wasn’t your fault, Caro. You only cooked the things.’

Caro took a deep breath. ‘This seems to be confession time all round, Trish.’

Oh, don’t, she thought. Don’t tell me you contaminated them yourself. How? Why? Aloud she said, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I didn’t either until today, but I’ve just had Cynthia weeping all over me in an orgy of self-recrimination.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Trish was beginning to feel dangerous.

‘You have to try to understand. She feels a kind of proprietary interest in my welfare. She said she knew Jess and I were going through a bad patch, and so she … Oh, shit! Even now I can’t believe it.’

The danger inside Trish was welling up to crisis point. ‘Are you telling me she deliberately made you ill? With E. coli 0157?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why, Caro?’

‘She had no idea it could be so dangerous. She just wanted me to be ill for a while because she thought Jess and I would do better, in her words, “If Jess understood her own strength”, and if I was forced to admit my weakness. Apparently when Cynthia and I were together I hurt her by putting her down all the time. I didn’t know I had. But that’s how she felt, and she says now that it’s why she left me. She said she could see me doing the same thing to Jess, and she couldn’t bear me to lose another relationship that mattered.’

‘So she poisoned you out of love, did she? Charming! And how did she do it exactly?’

‘E. coli is usually caused by faecal contamination of food,’ said Caro with absolutely no emotion in her voice. ‘You don’t want to know any more. Believe me.’

Trish shuddered. ‘I may be able to believe that, but not that
any friend of yours could take such a risk with your health. Sod it, with your life. How
could
she, Caro?’

‘I told you. She didn’t realize how dangerous it could be.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I believe her. I think.’

Trish suppressed some instinctive questions about revenge and obsession and irresponsibility and asked instead: ‘What are you going to do about her?’

‘I don’t know. That’s for another day. But I knew I owed you the truth.’

So it was nothing to do with Smarden Meats, Trish thought, or Ivyleaf Packaging. Will need never have gone anywhere near them, and Mandy could still be alive.

But the Flesker brothers would still have been smuggling meat out of Kent and bringing guns in, and Jamie Maxden would still be dead. Kim might not have found a way to tell her story. There were never any easy answers.

Trish’s phone rang. Without thinking, she picked it up to hear Antony saying that he’d booked a table at the quiet old-fashioned restaurant where she’d had asparagus and he coquilles Saint Jacques. He would meet her there at eight, he said, and didn’t wait for an answer.

The long flight was on time on Sunday morning. George and David stretched themselves as they walked from the plane into the terminal.

‘Can you get a trolley, David?’ George said as soon as they were through passport control and into the baggage reclaim hall. He was scanning the screens for signs of their flight number, while he rolled the stiffness out of his shoulders. ‘I’ll get the bags off the carousel.’

‘Sure,’ David said with his new cocky grin.

His teeth looked fantastically white against the golden tan. It might have been winter in Sydney, but the weather had been glorious. George hadn’t felt so well in years. He’d never seen the boy so perky.

‘Will Trish be here?’ David was having difficulty manoeuvring the heavy trolley, which had uncooperative wheels, but he didn’t appear to mind.

‘I hope so. The case is over and she promised she would be, so if she isn’t we can make the most enormous fuss. Look, isn’t that your bag?’

They both leaned forwards to grab the red nylon rucksack that held David’s books and games. George gave way. David hauled it on to the trolley.

‘D’you think she’s going to like the gum-tree pot pourri?’ he asked anxiously.

‘I’m sure she will. It’ll give her a faint flavour of what she’s been missing.’

Four minutes later their suitcases had appeared too. George loaded them on the trolley and pushed it towards the ‘nothing to declare’ channel. They got through without being challenged, then searched the thick crowd of people waiting outside. Cab drivers stood with name cards held up in front of them, hiding the faces of the people behind them.

George felt David tugging at his arm. ‘Look! Look! She
is
there. Trish!’

George followed his pointing finger and saw her. Trish’s dark eyes were blazing in a face that had far more colour than usual. Her lips curled in the best welcome he could have hoped for. She was wearing soft scarlet trousers he’d never seen, and a loose cream-coloured shirt. He abandoned David and the trolley.

She felt wonderful, too. Hugging her, he could feel that she was laughing. And that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She said his name, as breathless as he felt. It was he who pulled back eventually to remind her that David was there.

‘Hi, Trish,’ he said in his best new voice. ‘You look awesome.’

‘My Australian brother! I hadn’t realized you could catch the accent so easily.’

‘He puts it on, don’t you, Dave?’

‘Only sometimes. Did you bring the car, Trish? Or are we going back by bus?’

‘No, we’ve got the car. It’s in the multi-storey. Let’s go. Did you have fun?’

‘Yeah.’ David made sure there was room for him and squeezed up on her other side. ‘It was fantastic. The cousins were great. And they had these friends over all the time. They’ve got a pool, you know, in the garden. We used to spend all day in it. And we had barbies nearly every day.’

 

*

 

Trish let him prattle on, asking questions and commenting on what he told her, while her heart raced. Every so often she would glance up at George to show how much she wanted to say to him. He had one hand around her shoulders, while he guided the laden trolley with the other, but sometimes he couldn’t stop himself stroking her hair.

Suddenly she understood what the appalling Cynthia Flag had meant when she’d talked about Jess and Caro holding each other up. For two years Trish had felt it was her responsibility to keep both George and David happy, submerging herself and her own needs to do it. None of them had been happy. Now she understood how destructive that vast effort had been. All the three of them had needed was the freedom to be who they were, without distorting themselves to fit into someone else’s design.

How odd that Cynthia, having been aware enough to understand that, could have been capable of anything so dangerous!

There was a pause in the story of David’s adventures, while he bent down to retie the dragging laces of his trainers. George took quick advantage of it.

‘You look quite different, Trish. Absolutely fantastic. You’ve been voyaging through strange new worlds, too, haven’t you?’

She thought of everything that happened, Antony’s proposition and Will’s declaration, Caro’s near death and her own extreme fear. There’d been Kim, and the case. And there’d been the extraordinary evening yesterday with Paddy, when a lot of old hurts had been eased. One day, she’d tell George most of it. But not quite all.

‘In a way. You wouldn’t believe the half of it.’

In spite of the crowds all round them and David’s fascinated expression, George ignored the luggage trolley, took her face between his hands, and kissed her. At last he let her go.

‘Try me,’ he said.